


Nighthawks

by AcceleratedStall



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Apathy Syndrome, Gen, Hot Cocoa, Insomnia, Nihilism, Slice of Life, Spoilers up to November, Two POVs One Dialog, fatigue, keeping secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27036199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcceleratedStall/pseuds/AcceleratedStall
Summary: A typical Gekkoukan school night, presented in agonizing detail (or: two ships pass in the night.)
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

_“Nyehehehehe!”_ The chucking noise the Frost Imps make when you step into their aggro radius was funny, after dinner when Isako started playing.

 _“Nyehehehehe!” “Nyehehehehe!”_ Forty-five minutes to midnight, and it’s just deeply annoying. She taps a few keys and queues up a combo; her character duly performs an area-of-effect attack, releasing a pleasing corona of blue pixels across her monitor.

These imps were supposed to have a 2.5% drop rate for the Frozen Tear accessory she was after, so one in forty. She’s killed at least seventy-five without result. Can’t the game cut her a break once in a while? This is the last item she needs to complete this character build, and start actually having _fun!_

As if.

Isako can’t, strictly speaking, play with her eyes closed, but it’s definitely rote enough that she can let her attention wander a bit. She rolls her chair back from the keyboard and hears the sound of crumpling paper; something must have slipped off her desk earlier. Reaching down to collect it, she immediately identifies the Gekkoukan letterhead in the blue glow of her computer monitor; it’s the official statement from a couple days ago.

 _It is with great regret that Gekkoukan High School must confirm the death of Chairman Ikutsuki Shuji last night_ …

All the teachers had gotten a copy. When asked, Isako had declined to speculate beyond what it said - something about a rare heart defect. Alone with her thoughts over the long evenings, however, she can’t shake the feeling that something is off about the whole message.

What struck her most was that it was much too terse. Whoever wrote the statement made no effort to describe Ikutsuki’s career, or accomplishments as school chairman. There isn’t a word on surviving family members, or any organized remembrance or funeral. Just - he’s gone, there’s a new chairman, and a subtext of _please stop asking us about it_. And no explanation for why they found the body after midnight, on campus, at a part of the school he didn’t have any obvious reason to be visiting. Same night Mr. Kirijo himself passed away, too.

Something is off about the entire school, really, and the best average test scores in the prefecture aren’t nearly enough to hide it. No matter how much they talk about the current Gekkoukan facilities representing the Kirijo Group’s “undivided commitment to the next generation,” that fact that the _previous_ facilities hid the Kirijo Group’s exploding off-the-books science lab is the worst-kept secret in Iwatodai. The rate of Apathy Syndrome among Gekkoukan students is the highest in the whole country, and the school administration’s tight-lipped statements about “investigating” the reasons why never seem to be followed up by even the most perfunctory explanations.There’s an unfilled job posting on the school website, requesting a counselor; applicants are preferred to have experience working with orphans (which makes sense) or combat veterans (which does not.)

All of this is easy to overlook on its own, but there’s also a rumor in the faculty office that can’t quite be fully forgotten, because it seems to recur every few weeks. The gist of it is that Gekkoukan students appear to be commuting to and from school, in proper uniform, during the middle of the night, but nobody seems to know what they’re doing, or even see them arrive there. It doesn’t appear to be a cover for underaged drinking, petty crime, or anything else illicit; the timing never matches up with any reports like that from the city, and the uniforms wouldn’t make sense in any case. That doesn’t stop people mentioning it to the school with unusual regularity - and different ones every time, too, from concerned parents to bored janitors to cab drivers at the station. At the school, every workday begins to find the place empty and untouched; there has never been a single thing stolen, and every review of the campus’ security camera footage turns up nothing.

If all these clues point to some answer, it’s far past Isako’s imagination to speculate what it is; all this time and she hasn’t even arrived at the question. Returning her attention to her computer monitor, she attempts to open the game’s inventory screen, only to be suddenly booted back to the desktop.

“Hey!” Isako cries in futility; she knows her keyboard shortcuts and she definitely didn’t hit that one. Atop a whole set of unanswered Gekkoukan e-mails appears a system message - _“Windows will now restart your computer to finish installing updates. Click here for details.”_

“Son of a bitch,” she sighs, falling limp in her chair. It was probably best to stop playing for the night anyway; even if they built Gekkoukan High halfway down the slope to the Uncanny Valley, its students still deserve a job done right, and tonight that meant grading the long-form literature analysis essays. The more points an assignment was worth, the sooner and louder students clamored for their grades back, and this essay was worth quite a bit. Getting it done before class tomorrow was obviously beyond her, but Isako could at least get a sense for how the class handled the assignment overall, and maybe take care of the two or three at the top of the pile, with an eye towards handing them all back by the end of the week.

The first obstacle to this plan is remembering where she left the damn things. She looks around her desk, then around the room, then retraces her steps - she packed the essays all up in a single file folder, took it to the faculty office, and…

Now Isako has a good reason to curse, she realizes - the folder must still be there. She probably got distracted on her way out the door by a conversation with Ms. Terauchi or something.

The obvious first option, with dark streets outside her window, no clothes on besides underwear and a tank top, and a headache coming on, is to go to bed and get to school early tomorrow, but that will get her only an hour or so of extra time to work, which would probably leave enough later in the week to turn her entire schedule upside down anyway. The school does have some kind of after hours access policy, but it’s in the employee handbook that she lost six months ago.

As Isako casts aside momentary notions of breaking in to the place, Windows finally grants her access to her own computer again, attempting to launch all the programs running before it restarted. The first e-mail to reappear on her screen is titled “FWD: Updated Contact List;” featuring all the fascinating details on how to reach the principal, academic dean, nurse’s office, night security… wait, that last one might actually be worth a try.

The time blinks in the lower right corner of the computer screen; 23:36. The contact list e-mail specifically notes that security is only on campus until 23:45, returning at 1:00; no reason for the lengthy gap between shifts is offered. Isako dials anyway.

After five rings of the phone, and halfway through a sixth, Isako is just about ready to give up, when a scratchy, gruff voice comes from the other end of the line. “Night watch, Saitou here. Make it quick, I’m on my way out the door.”

“Uh, hello, It’s Toriumi - I teach composition - just found out I left something in the faculty office.” The reason why she found out now, rather than earlier in the evening, is best left unmentioned.

“Well, you aren’t the first, and I’d let you in, but I’m supposed to have everything locked up in about five minutes,” Saitou answers.

“Even though there’s someone coming back later in the night?”

“‘Fraid so,” the night watchman confirms with a burst of static.

“Could you drop it off by the gate when you leave then?” Isako asks.

“Maybe. What exactly am I lookin’ for?” Probably should have set that straight earlier.

“It’s a brown folder-thing with papers in it. The type you close with a string, that kinda has accordion sides?” That’s not the right way to describe it, but she can’t think of a better one. “I wrote ’Toriumi’ on it with one of those smelly silver pens.”

“Alright, I’ll see what I can do.” There’s static from the other end of the line, and indeterminate shuffling noises.

Isako waits as patiently as she can manage; she had expected Saitou to hang up while he looked, but apparently not. Holding the phone in one hand, she makes a token effort to tidy up her desk with the other.

After a moment - too long to listen to a silent receiver, but also too short to make any progress on her desk - Saitou’s voice returns, with a perceptible note of satisfaction. “Found it!”

“Really?”

“Sure enough. I’ll leave it outside the front gate. Don’t take too long picking it up,” Saitou warns, his gruff tone returning.

“Thank you so much!” Never mind the gruffness, this could save Isako hours of grading time, and gaming time, in a few days. “I ought to make it up to you somehow. Get you a cake or something.”

She hadn’t really meant to say that last part out loud, but then, if somebody owed _her_ a favor, cake was her preferred means of repayment.

“Then you should know I’ve got a chocolate allergy.” With that, Saitou hangs up, and Isako gets up from her chair.

At this time of night, the monorail only runs once every half-hour, so there will be less wasted time driving. Isako switches on the kitchen light to locate her keys, and finds her shelves alarmingly bare; should probably get something for breakfast in the morning while she’s out. Before stepping out her apartment’s front door she throws on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt to look at least somewhat presentable.

Isako twists the key and her car’s engine turns over with an unsettling wheeze; she has learned to tolerate it, along with the weird rattle that lasts from 10 kph to the top of first gear, and the perpetually dirty mouse-fur upholstery. Weak yellow headlights are still good enough to point the way out to the bridge and into the Gekkoukan High parking lot; she stomps on the clutch pedal and shifts into gear.

The journey over to the school is uneventful, apart from a few detours for construction, pointed out with bright fluorescent paint in her headlights. She parks with the clock in her dashboard reading 23:58. Though the Gekkoukan front gate is shut, she spots something leaning against it in the pale glow of the streetlights - a brown folder with a drawstring.

She kneels down next to the folder and quickly flips through its contents - the description she gave Saitou wasn’t great, but these are indeed the essays she was looking for. As she rises to her feet with the folder in hand, the world goes dark for the tiniest fraction of a second - like she just blinked, even though she doesn’t feel her eyes move - and a can of soda appears on the ground in front of her, no more than three paces from where she’s standing. Not while she was looking elsewhere - right before her eyes.

Isako blinks again, intentionally and longer this time, but the can doesn’t go away. It wasn’t there before - she’s positive there wasn’t anything else on the sidewalk leading up to the school gate, or else her folder wouldn’t have been so easy to find. Indeed, the can is placed such that she probably should have kicked it over on her way in.

A single open can of Moonkist would be an oddly specific hallucination. She reaches down and picks it up - no, it’s quite real. It’s still cold; Isako can feel the aluminum sweating against her fingers. Giving it a little shake, she feels the liquid inside slew back and forth - about half full. The final test would be to drink some, but someone else already has and that’s gross. Besides, Moonkist isn’t her brand. She sets the can back down, in approximately the same place it appeared.

Back at her car, she deposits the all-important folder on the passenger seat, but pauses a moment before starting the engine. Maybe Saitou left the soda behind on his way out. It’s not a remotely complete or satisfying explanation, but it’s also all she can come up with.

As she turns back on to the expressway Isako leaves the window open long enough to get a blast of cold air to her face; it staves off her headache for another half a minute or so, but then the wind starts pounding in her ears. Taking the Moonlight Bridge at night is a little like playing an arcade driving game - all the unnecessary details are abstracted away, leaving just the glow of the gauges on Isako’s dashboard, and the lane markings in front of her leaping out in brightly reflective paint. The lights of both Iwatodai and Port Island reflect on the water, but they’re distant and flat - a backdrop, less important than they appear.

Her exit appears just past the end of the bridge, and Isako shifts down from fifth gear to fourth, then third. A single lane splits off from the highway to make a 180-degree descending arc, connecting to a boulevard that runs along the shoreline. The concrete barriers on each side always feel just a little too high and a little too close, but as she rounds the bend a green light comes into view ahead; Isako eases onto the accelerator pedal to-

Someone in the road, in front of her car. Isako’s blood freezes; she shouts a curse unheard even by herself and jams the brakes, numb to everything but reflex. The deceleration lurches her forward in her seat; all four tires howl in protest as the folder full of essays on her passenger seat jumps towards the dashboard.

 _Not enough_. _Too fast to stop._ She points the car towards the gap between the silhouetted figure and the barrier defining the edge of the road. The brake on one wheel locks up; she wrestles the steering wheel. A dreadful scraping sound shakes the entire car as one hubcap strikes the cement curb.

The person - a man, wearing blue oil-stained overalls, and how strange to notice that detail now - slips past the passenger’s side window of Isako’s car without so much as a single twitch of a muscle. About twenty meters on, she feels the vehicle finally, mercifully come to a stop. A drip of cold sweat lands on her sweatshirt. In the mirror she can see behind her the man in the road - untouched.

It’s only now that Isako can piece together what just happened. The man - perhaps a utility or construction worker - was an Apathy Syndrome case, so he didn’t move, or even sense the danger. She didn’t see him soon enough because of the sharp curve of the exit ramp and the high barriers on either side of the pavement; seeing the green light further along, she had assumed the path was clear because there was no reason to think otherwise at this time of night. No harm done - but only by an eyelash.

Gingerly, Isako pulls forward a few hundred meters to find a safer place to stop, then fumbles around for her cell phone. Finally getting a solid grasp on it, she dials _4-4-4_ \- they could hardly have chosen a more unlucky number if they tried. Easy to remember, though.

“Apathy Syndrome hotline, serving Port Island and Iwatodai. How may we help you?” The voice on the other end of the line is so dull and unaffected it might as well be a recording.

Her heart still hammering in her chest, Isako feels little inclination to mince words. “There’s a man with Apathy Syndrome on the first offramp from the Moonlight Bridge in the middle of traffic. Get him off there or he’s dead by morning.”

Seemingly unmoved, the voice calmly answers “Please provide location and description.” Maybe it _is_ a recording.

“Description is a man in blue overalls. Location is _I just told you_ ,” Isako snaps.

“Which end of the bridge are you talking about?”

At least it’s a real person after all - and that’s actually an important thing to leave out, Isako realizes with a deep breath.

“Iwatodai side, so westbound? The connector to the waterfront road,” she clarifies.

“Understood. We’ll send someone over right away.” The line goes dead; Isako leans her head back and hisses a sigh.

Before starting her car back up, Isako takes another glance in her rear view mirror; the dark silhouette of the man she almost ran over remains. Whoever the hotline people sent - police, social worker, EMT, something like that - is on their way, but it’s hard to imagine them getting there in less than fifteen minutes. This is only one of the exits from Moonlight Bridge and not the busiest at this time of night, but even then, dozens more drivers will pass through before he is removed. And they’ll all have to avoid him with no warning like Isako just did.

She sighs and pulls her keys back out of the ignition. Leaving the car’s lights blinking, she steps out onto the asphalt; still tense with adrenaline, her own legs feel strange underneath her. The distance from her car to the poor man further up the ramp, dispensed with almost instantly just a few moments prior, now feels endless. Trying to ignore the chilling, salty wind off the water, Isako fixes her eyes forward, anticipating and fearing the sight of oncoming headlights, but by some miracle none come.

At last she reaches her target. Apathy Syndrome sufferers may not move or talk, but they do seem to have a tendency to tilt their heads up towards the sky; as though they’re looking, if not seeing. At least it saves Isako from having to look into the man’s eyes.

Cautiously Isako grasps the man’s wrist; he lets out a sigh, nearly lost on the wind, but predictably, Isako’s tug has no effect. She notices his overalls have belt loops; she tries taking one in each hand and pulling. This doesn’t succeed in moving him either, until it does, and the both of them collapse to the asphalt in a heap. Stumbling back on to her feet with a curse, she drags the man by the collar until he is slumped against the concrete berm defining the edge of the road - still not a great place to be resting, but better than before, a fact underscored when Isako spots headlights rounding the turn further up the ramp.

A sharp blast of cold air follows the car down, strong enough to make Isako falter in the walk back to her car as it passes.

“It’s here!” A voice pierces the moment of quiet that follows; Isako turns on her heels, but there’s no one else to be seen.

“It’s here!” repeats… the Apathy Syndrome case she just dragged to the side of the road? They weren’t supposed to say anything, all the doctors on television said - no matter what the sentimental rumors suggested.

“What? What’s here?” Isako asks in confused frustration, but three more cars pass without the man making another sound; he only stares out into space, the way they all do.

The heater in her car is only ever good for about half of her body at once, but Isako is still grateful for the limited warmth as she retrieves the folder of essays from its landing spot in the footwell, and restores it to its previous position on the passenger seat. With a wary check of her mirrors, she pulls back out onto the street.

The remainder of the drive ought to be routine, but when she steps out of the car in the convenience store parking area, Isako realizes how tense she still is - judging from how her fingers feel, she must have been gripping the steering wheel twice as hard as usual. Hearing the chime over the door when she walks inside is a relief, simply because she can be a bit less _focused_ for a while. Besides, there’s a cashier behind the counter, so if anything weird happens in here, there’s a witness.

Two witnesses, actually; it takes Isako a moment to notice the other customer in the store. The realizations of who it is grow increasingly awkward with detail - a high school student, a Gekkoukan high school student, a Gekkoukan high school student _in her class_. Shiomi Kotone - sharp, well motivated, and apart from that a bit of a cipher. As soon as she notices her teacher she smiles, but the rest of her appearance is more of a frown, or a scowl. Her hair is streaked with dried sweat, and there’s a bandage over her eyebrow like the one that Sanada kid always has. Something smudged the school insignia on her uniform blazer, which hangs differently on one sleeve than the other. For some reason, she’s only wearing one sock; spreading out on her bare leg just below the knee is a vivid purple bruise. Instead of the clean, well-creased loafers she usually wears to school, a weather-beaten pair of trainers are on her feet. Even the way Shiomi walks and stands suggests either injury or pronounced fatigue.

Toriumi isn’t sure how to start this conversation; fortunately, Shiomi relieves her of the burden with a sunny “Good morning, _sensei_!”

“It isn’t -“ Toriumi begins, then remembers the time she saw on the dashboard clock getting out of her car - “huh, you’re right.” She sighs and fumbles the packaged cinnamon roll she had been trying to grab off the shelf.

Shiomi picks it up, hands it back, and must catch something about her teacher’s demeanor. “Something the matter?” she asks.

“Long night.”

“Aren’t they all?” Shiomi offers nonchalantly.

“I had to pick up some papers I’d left behind on campus, and on my way back I almost wrecked the car, so… longer than usual. Kinda needed to duck in here just to catch my breath,” Toriumi elaborates.

“You were at school?” It’s difficult to understand why that’s the part that surprises her.

“Only briefly - I called ahead and had the security guard leave what I needed at the gate beforehand. Nothing too unusual about that, but taking the bridge back to Iwatodai, there was somebody with Apathy Syndrome in the road. Blind curve, so I couldn’t see him - it was all I could do not to hit him.”

Toriumi puts the cinnamon roll back on the shelf. “They said on TV that Apathy Syndrome was keyed to the phases of the moon somehow. Supposed to be one of the times when there aren’t many of them right now.”

“That was another lie,” Shiomi notes disdainfully, and she’s probably right.

“Anyway, that’s my excuse,” Toriumi finishes. “What’s yours?” She has better things to do than try to get an honor student in trouble, but she really would feel more comfortable if Shiomi wasn’t out this late.

Shiomi doesn’t miss a beat, quickly replying, “Do I need one?”

“Only technically. Student handbook says you aren’t supposed to be out in public after midnight. Luckily for you, no one really cares about that besides Ekoda. Long as you aren’t here to buy cigarettes.”

“Practice ran long today,” Shiomi explains, “and I had promised Fuuka I’d pick up some ingredients for cooking club tomorrow, but before I could go, Odagiri had a bunch of Student Council errands for me to run. Hadn’t even started on my homework when I got back to the dorm. That’s what I’m working on now, but I needed a quick break.” Nothing obviously stands out as a lie, but her delivery is too glib, like she practiced this answer.

“Right… Look, I know we encourage everyone to do extracurriculars, but no one is saying you have to do them all on the same day.” Toriumi pauses, struck with the realization of an unhappy possibility. Every now and again there was a student who stayed on campus as long as they could, not because they wanted to, but because it wasn’t safe to go home. Iori had been one; there were probably others she just couldn’t see. Shiomi didn’t look right tonight; it was unlikely, but…

She’d need much more of a plan than this if abuse really was involved, but Toriumi asks anyway. “Is there… are you avoiding the dorm? If there’s an issue with your living arrangements…”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.” Shiomi seems outright bemused.

“Then you should probably get some sleep.”

“It’s been… difficult, lately, to do that.” The dark shadows under Shiomi’s eyes suggest that much, at least, is honest truth.

“Ever try a mug of hot chocolate before bed? Used to help for me.”

“Oh, I like that idea,” Shiomi replies, slipping back into her easy, model-student affability. “Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll taste good.”

Shiomi turns and walks slowly over to the shelf with powdered coffee, tea mix, and related items, then stops, heaves a sigh, and bends over, hands braced against her knees. She holds the position, gazing into space, eyes suddenly and fearfully vacant.

Toriumi stops beside her and points. “It’s right here, you know. You… you sure you’re okay?”

Shiomi snaps back up to something almost resembling her full height. “Really, I’m fine. It’s just… I don’t know how to explain it.” She turns over the box of hot cocoa mix in her hands. “A loss of faith, or an existential crisis, or something. I don’t know what to believe.”

“About what, exactly?”

Shiomi avoids Toriumi’s eyes, and chooses her words with obvious care. “A promise, of a sort, that I was trying to fulfill. One night it turned out to be an outright lie.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I don’t either.”

“Well, if you made the effort in good faith, and emerge knowing better, I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong,” Toriumi attempts to assure her.

“There isn’t any knowing better, though - there’s just nothing at all. Some people find conviction in adversity. All I’ve found is nihilism.”

She doesn’t sound terribly happy with her own conclusion, unlike a lot of teenage nihilists. Not a lot to go on, but it’s something. “I don’t know about that. Some realizations take time,” Toriumi suggests.

“I hope so,” Shiomi answers unconvinced.

“Look, I could give you better advice if I knew what you were actually talking about.”

Shiomi shakes her head. “Can’t tell you.”

That much, Toriumi had determined already, but Shiomi seems to regard the statement as definitive, setting out for the cash register with no further explanation. Quickly grabbing a container of oatmeal for tomorrow, or rather later today, Toriumi follows, but no more advice comes to mind; nor do any more questions, as sure as she is that they need to be asked. It’s not like anyone else on the school’s staff would believe that the best student in her grade is… whatever she is right now. By time of the morning roll call, Toriumi might not even believe it herself.

So in the end, Shiomi slips out of the store without another word exchanged between them. Back in her car and pulling onto the street, Toriumi catches her in her headlights on the sidewalk - but only for a moment.

The drive back to her apartment is mercifully uneventful; Toriumi lurches through the door and tries to ignore the dull pain behind her eyes. Depositing the oatmeal in the kitchen, Toriumi falls into her chair and lays out the stack of essays on her desk. Taking a red pen in her hand, she notes the name on the top of the page of the first one - Mochizuki, the new kid - he drew a little heart next to his name for some goddamn reason. The words swim back and forth in front of her - hard to tell if it’s her headache, or Mochizuki is just that incoherent.

She drops her pen, trudges from her desk to her bed, falls flat, and waits for the sunrise.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s easy to find the dorm during the Dark Hour - it’s the only building on the street with lights that still work. The pair by the front door were installed specifically for this reason - a welcome for a time when there’s no one else around to offer one. They weren’t supposed to be needed anymore - the Dark Hour wasn’t supposed to exist anymore - yet still they flicker on in the greenish gloom.

Kotone knows better than to assume all familiar welcomes are friendly; last week had seen well enough to that. “Hold up,” she instructs the rest of SEES as they gather outside the front door. “Fuuka?”

Fuuka nods, draws her Evoker and presses it against her temple; with a gentle ripple of blue light, Juno looms over the whole team, Fuuka ensconced safely in the bubble underneath her. Kotone watches curiously as Fuuka’s lips move in an unheard whisper, hands clasped tightly in front of her.

“All clear,” Fuuka says, and it’s hard to tell whether her voice is coming from inside Kotone’s head, or out of it.  
“How’s Mitsuru?” Kotone asks.  
“Asleep,” Fuuka answers. At the moment, that’s probably the best they can hope for.

As suddenly as she appeared, Juno is gone. Kotone throws open the front door, free of the fear of ambush by Shadows or otherwise. The thought occurs to her that the boundary between sound judgement and paranoia used to be a lot clearer.

Fuuka, Koromaru, and Aigis are already inside, and Akihiko is stepping across the threshold, when Junpei suddenly hisses “Damn it!” His voice isn’t loud, but in the quiet of the Dark Hour it has the impact of a shout; Ken, who had been almost asleep on his feet while Fuuka scanned the dorm building, snaps back to the waking world, rubbing his eyes in confusion. Yukari jumps back from Junpei like he’s a wasp threatening to sting her.

“What is it?” Kotone demands, her pulse suddenly pounding. Whatever bruises and sprains that Yukari’s last Diarama didn’t catch begin to throb.  
“Just remembered I left my Moonkist at the school gate, heh,” Junpei explains sheepishly.  
“That’s all? Dumbass,” Yukari chides, and gives him a light punch to the shoulder.  
“I’m pretty sure we could make our own Moonkist, actually,” Kotone says, the adrenaline ebbing away as the remainder of their group steps into the dorm lounge. “Just need sugar water, benzoic acid, and green dye number 6.”  
“Are you trying to brag about your chemistry grade again? You gotta stop flaunting it in front of the dumbasses!” Junpei protests. Kotone waves him off.

Excitement over with for the time being, everyone seems to slow down from cumulative fatigue. Suffused with canine assurance that his job for the night is complete, Koromaru curls up in front of the television set. Fuuka opens up her laptop at the table despite the fact it isn’t working yet; Aigis sits down next to her upright and expectant, the only remaining SEES member with decent posture at this hour. Akihiko makes for the kitchen, then stops and stares, either uncertain what he actually wants to eat or just waiting for the Dark Hour to end. Ken flops down onto the nearest chair and immediately falls asleep.

“Someone should get him up to his room,” Yukari notes with some concern. Junpei wakes him up a second time with a nudge, and they trundle upstairs; Yukari soon follows, carrying a pile of textbooks and notes she had been using earlier in the evening.

“Not planning on doing any more cramming tonight, are you?” Kotone asks after her. “Kind of a bad night for it.”  
From halfway to the second floor, Yukari answers, “No, just tidying up a-“

Before she can finish the sentence, something in the air changes, a hitch in the breath of the world. Lights inside the dorm and out switch on; a passing car resumes its journey down the street outside. A weather report begins to play on the television, unbidden by anyone; fortunately, the volume is low enough to only slightly disturb Koromaru. Right on cue, Fuuka switches on her computer and hands the end of a cable to Aigis, who plugs it into an aperture around where her collarbone would be, if she were human. The Dark Hour is over.

It’s strange - SEES can spend as little or as much time in Tartarus as they like, but the Dark Hour always seems to end just before or just after they reach the dorm again regardless. They’ve wondered about time behaving differently in the Dark Hour since before the operation to rescue Fuuka; under other circumstances, Kotone might bring it up with Mitsuru and see if the Kirijo people can find out anything more concrete.

It’s not clear when - or if - those circumstances will return. Mitsuru is a pale apparition in the halls now, never heard and rarely seen, only present in the very few free minutes that meetings and wills and funeral plans still grant her. The concerns of the Kirijo Group, SEES, Tartarus, and the Student Council seem remote when it’s hard for Kotone to tell how much she has even been eating.

Kotone supposes that they’re all a bit gaunt these days, though, if not necessarily in a physical sense. She searches around the lounge for the remote control to switch off the television. “Why does no one ever remember to turn this thing off?” she asks nobody in particular; Fuuka shrugs, but doesn’t look up from her laptop or answer.

“Data upload complete,” Aigis announces, standing up and removing the cable first from Fuuka’s computer and then from the base of her own neck. “I will proceed to my room and stand by until 0700. Kotone-san, please complete treatment of your remaining superficial wounds.” She dashes up the stairs in a faintly audible rhythm of hydraulic hisses and clicking metal. The sheer incongruity of the moment is almost enough to wipe away the memories of seeing her frozen in place, guns trained on Kotone’s forehead.  
Kotone tilts her head quizzically. “But if they’re superficial, doesn’t that mean…”  
“I think she’s trying to show concern,” Fuuka suggests.

Kotone sighs, and heads over to the freezer for an ice pack. Standing next to it is Akihiko, scraping out the remnants of a little tin of yogurt, its foil packaging trumpeting various nutritional benefits.  
“Not going to bed yet?” he asks idly.  
“Ever been completely exhausted, but also way too alert to switch off and rest at the same time?” Kotone asks in reply.  
“Lot of times, yeah,” Akihiko concedes.  
“Well, it’s that.”  
“Right. It is a school day tomorrow though, so don’t wait too long.”

Kotone kneels down and pulls off her left sock to get a look at her leg; about three floors before they quit for the night, she’d tripped and taken an awkward fall getting out of the way of a Shadow’s swinging sword. Could’ve been much worse; there’s no broken skin or dislocation, just a mildly hyperextended tendon and the blotchy beginnings of a bruise spreading out below her knee. And the Shadow did miss.

Holding the ice to her upper shin, she looks up at Akihiko again. “Akihiko-senpai?” she asks. “Could you… could you keep an eye on Mitsuru-senpai if you can? You’ve known her longer than we have.”  
“I don’t know what to say to her either,” he replies, wincing with the admission like it’s his knee that’s bruised.  
“Talking doesn’t even enter into it right now. It just feels awful to leave her alone.” Kotone turns her gaze to the floor.  
“Taking her to Tartarus tonight wouldn’t have made any sense.” Akihiko punctuates the statement with the clatter of his yogurt container into the trash.  
“No, I don’t mean tonight… okay, maybe a little bit. But just…” Kotone makes an expansive, yet feeble gesture with her free hand, “in general.”  
Akihiko nods. “I’ll try.”  
“Thanks,” Kotone offers a weak smile of relief.  
“Now get some sleep.” With that, Akihiko, too, disappears up the stairs.

It’s good advice. At some point Kotone may even follow it. Not yet, though - Tartarus is still playing itself back in her head. Tactics for battles fought and unfought, praises and warnings from the Velvet Room, the locations of people needing rescue, what to do differently the next night they’re there… and, one more time, gunshots on a cold night. There’s no way to get to sleep with her mind racing like this.

Kotone pulls herself back up, files the ice pack away in the freezer, and makes for the front door. Fuuka is the last person left in the lounge - apart from a sleeping Koromaru - staring at columns of numbers and inscrutable abbreviations on her monitor. She looks up at Kotone as she passes, trying to read her silence.

“Um… good work in Tartarus tonight,” Fuuka offers tentatively.  
“I guess,” Kotone answers, leaning back against the desk with the sign-in sheet.  
“Something bothering you?” Fuuka picks up on the sullen note in her voice.  
“I think I was hoping I’d find something that would make it all make sense. The Dark Hour, the Shadows, Ikutsuki. Tartarus seemed like the only place left to look. But we went as far as we could, and it was the same as it always is.”  
She rearranges a hairpin come askew; how long had it been that way?  
“Nothing there to explain why Ikutsuki was so convinced the world had to end. Nothing there to say whether we’ve accomplished anything at all this whole time, besides whatever he was ranting about.”  
“We’re not at the top yet.”  
“I know. Doesn’t matter.” Kotone turns her face downward, and catches her forehead in one hand. When she looks back up, there’s red on her fingers, from a shallow cut over her eyebrow. “Huh. Forgot about that one.”

As Kotone applies disinfectant and an adhesive bandage, Fuuka closes up her laptop. She’s got one foot on the stairs when she notices Kotone slipping her shoes on. “You’re going out?” she asks, sounding a little concerned.  
“Just the convenience store,” Kotone answers. “Need anything there?”  
“No, thank you.” Fuuka pauses. “Um… you’re still missing one sock.”  
“There was a hole in the toe. I was going to have to get rid of it anyway.”  
“Really? Er, anyway - stay safe.”  
“I will.” With that Kotone shuts the door and slips into the cold night air.

There’s a murmur on the wind now, missing during the Dark Hour - sounds from the machinery of the city, too indistinct and scattered to separate. The headlights of a moving car cast a long shadow from Kotone’s feet, twisting and then vanishing as the vehicle passes. With fewer motorists on the road after midnight, every traffic light on the street moves in sync; green lights stretching into the distance like a string of beads. The rest of the world takes on the orange tint of the streetlamps, or else fades into the darkness. As she walks, Kotone feels a distant throb of pain from her bruised knee, but it’s minor - likely to be gone by the morning. There’s something weirdly reassuring about the rhythm of it, following her steps.

A dark shape flickers along the edge of the sidewalk, at the edge of Kotone’s peripheral vision. She freezes; so too does the shape. An echo of tension sounds in her mind, but fades even faster - it’s just a rat. Maybe a few years ago, that would have been a fright - but rats mean the world is relatively normal, now. The Dark Hour doesn’t have any.

The rat scurries into an open drainpipe and disappears.

There’s a little cedar tree, planted in a pot, outside the front door of the convenience store. Kotone can’t speak to the thoughts of whoever put it there, but something about its presence accentuates, rather than softens, the artificiality of its setting. Maybe the problem is the white fluorescent lights from inside the store illuminating the tree from behind and spilling out onto the black pavement, their brightness turned up to antiseptic levels.

Automatic doors open with an electronic chime, blowing into Kotone’s nose the smell of cleaning products that these places always have. She waves to the clerk behind the counter, who mumbles some kind of half-hearted greeting from behind his plexiglas shield, then turns to the shelves - buying something was never really the point of this exercise, but she would still feel silly to leave empty handed.

Prompted by the sudden rise in temperature entering the store, a reflexive shiver runs through Kotone’s body; she feels goose pimples rise on her one bare leg. Perhaps something warm would feel nice. Before she can choose anything, though, the chime at the door rings again.

The face of the woman entering the store is a familiar one, but the context is all wrong. By the time Kotone realizes she has just looked her homeroom teacher in the eye, it’s too late to pretend she hasn’t seen her. Ms. Toriumi seems to reach a similar conclusion herself, though the recognition of one of her many students takes a fraction longer.

It’s not clear to what degree Toriumi is still her teacher, and Kotone still Toriumi’s student, in a convenience store almost an hour after midnight. Out of the classroom though they might be, they aren’t strangers, or equals, and some schools she’s attended have been more suspicious of their charges than others. Still, Kotone isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary - at the moment, at least. All she can do is plow on through, with a smile if she can manage one.

“Good morning, _sensei!_ ” Kotone offers cheerfully.  
“It isn’t -“ Toriumi starts, then stops, perhaps realizing the time - “huh, you’re right.” She sighs; a cinnamon roll in a clear plastic sleeve slips out of her hand and falls to the floor.  
Reaching down to pick it up, Kotone asks, “Something the matter?”  
Accepting it, Toriumi answers, “Long night.”  
“Aren’t they all?”  
“I had to pick up some papers I’d left behind on campus, and on my way back I almost wrecked the car, so… longer than usual. Kinda needed to duck in here just to catch my breath.”  
“You were at school?” Kotone suppresses a moment of real alarm; the fact that Toriumi was standing here talking to her was probably proof enough that she had escaped Tartarus and the Dark Hour unscathed. Probably.  
“Only briefly - I called ahead and had the security guard leave what I needed at the gate beforehand.” Toriumi continues. “Nothing too unusual about that, but taking the bridge back to Iwatodai, there was somebody with Apathy Syndrome in the middle of the road. Blind curve, so I couldn’t see him - it was all I could do not to hit him.”

Toriumi replaces the cinnamon roll, eyes scanning the shelf without satisfaction. She doesn’t look much like herself, in a sweatshirt and jeans and without makeup. “They said on TV that Apathy Syndrome was keyed to the phases of the moon somehow. Supposed to be one of the times when there aren’t many of them right now.”  
“That was another lie,” Kotone remarks, and instantly regrets it - not just the content but the tone, a hiss of resentment through her teeth. Now she’ll have to explain why she’s angry.

Toriumi’s attention is apparently elsewhere, though, as she continues, “Anyway, that’s my excuse. What’s yours?”  
“Do I need one?” Honestly, she’s glad that Toriumi has given her an out.  
“Only technically. Student handbook says you aren’t supposed to be out in public after midnight. Luckily for you, no one really cares about that besides Ekoda. Long as you aren’t here to buy cigarettes.” Stern as Toriumi usually is, and as stressed as she seems tonight, Kotone can still pick up a hint of mirth.

Kotone has plenty of alibis to pick from, and they’re all verifiable, if not to the day and minute. “Practice ran long today, “and I had promised Fuuka I’d pick up some ingredients for cooking club tomorrow, but before I could go, Odagiri had a bunch of Student Council errands for me to run. Hadn’t even started on my homework when I got back to the dorm. That’s what I’m working on now, but I needed a quick break,” she finishes with an sheepish smile.

“Right… Look, I know we encourage everyone to do extracurriculars, but no one is saying you have to do them all on the same day.” Toriumi pauses. “Is there… are you avoiding the dorm? If there’s an issue with your living arrangements…”  
“No, no, it’s nothing like that.” That really wasn’t the direction Kotone was expecting her teacher’s worries to take.  
“Then you should probably get some sleep.”  
“It’s been… difficult, lately, to do that,” Kotone answers downcast.  
“Ever try a mug of hot chocolate before bed? Used to help for me.”  
“Oh, I like that idea. Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll taste good.”

The thought is enough for Kotone to smile, despite herself. As she completes the final few steps to the relevant section of the store, however, a wave long building crashes into her once again - months of effort and fear and pain rewarded only with loss and betrayal and _exhaustion_. She folds in place like a paper doll, eyes open but unseeing, passing slow, uncounted seconds.

Toriumi finally emerges beside her and gestures to one of the boxes on the shelf. “It’s right here, you know. You… you sure you’re okay?”

Kotone forces herself straight again. “Really, I’m fine. It’s just… I don’t know how to explain it.” Her fingers turn the box of hot cocoa mix around in her hand, an idle motion to match the empty turning in her brain. “A loss of faith, or an existential crisis, or something. I don’t know what to believe.”  
“About what, exactly?”

Kotone’s eyes catch a dark scuff on the floor and stay there. There’s too much she can’t say, and too much Toriumi can’t believe, but every time she has to meet concern with indifference it feels a little bit worse. She improvises a euphemism and recites it carefully. “A promise, of a sort, that I was trying to fulfill. One night it turned out to be an outright lie.”  
“I’m not sure I understand.” Her expression is neutral, but Toriumi’s skepticism couldn’t be more clear.  
“I don’t either.”  
“Well, if you made the effort in good faith, and emerge knowing better, I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.” Her words of consolation seem genuine enough, but so uncertain.  
“There isn’t any knowing better, though - there’s just nothing at all. Some people find conviction in adversity. All I’ve found is nihilism.” The admission itself is painful; how was it, that after facing death at the hands of a man convinced everything had to end, that Kotone could find so little worth continuing?  
“I don’t know about that. Some realizations take time.”  
“I hope so.”  
“Look, I could give you better advice if I knew what you were actually talking about.”  
Kotone shakes her head. “Can’t tell you.”

Kotone approaches the checkout counter, Toriumi following a few steps behind with some kind of ready-mix oatmeal thing; the cashier turns from a grainy little television he’d been watching on his side of the acrylic barrier separating them. He accepts the payment Kotone slides across the counter, and she hurries out of the store ahead of any further questions, playing the conversation with Ms. Toriumi back in her head. Maybe she shouldn’t have said a word - _definitely_ she shouldn’t have said a word - but Toriumi was, at least, a voice from outside - not betrayed, not grieving, not angry. Her skeptical glance may wound, but it’s also a reminder, of another time and another frame of mind.

A reminder will have to be enough, for now.

Heaving open the front door to the dorm, Kotone stumbles into the lounge, wafted forward on the warm indoor air. The space is empty but for the sleeping form of Koromaru, and a single figure, seated - almost slumped, really - near the kitchen.  
“Thought you were asleep,” Kotone says, with a note of concern she can’t fully hide.  
“I was, until a few moments ago,” Mitsuru answers. Her hair does have the appearance that it was just pressed against a pillow; dark circles shadow her eyes.  
“Nightmare?” Kotone asks.  
“It was… an unpleasant dream.”  
Kotone turns to the kitchen, pulling down a saucepan and retrieving the milk from the refrigerator. “Can I get you anything?”  
“No, thank you,” Mitsuru answers.

In silence Kotone reads the instructions printed on the hot cocoa packets, turns up the heat on the stove, and begins to stir; when she next turns around, Mitsuru has already disappeared upstairs. When faint tendrils of steam begin rising from the milk warming on the stove, Kotone fetches two mugs. Maybe Toriumi was on to something after all; as the smell of the cocoa reaches her nose, Kotone’s long-delayed drowsiness finally begins to arrive.

The two flights of stairs to the third floor have never been quite so imposing as when attempted carrying a serving tray laden with two full mugs of hot cocoa, after the better part of nineteen hours awake. Still, Kotone persists, spilling only a few drops. Outside Mitsuru’s door, she leaves one of the two hot cocoas, announcing it with a discreet knock before finally retreating to her room.

Sitting on her bed, still wearing just the one sock, she sips from her own mug, until all that remains is the warmth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this, know that I appreciate your persistence! I put a lot of effort into this, so I hope it's enjoyable.
> 
> I don't believe in continuity, but I guess I did borrow a few ideas and themes from January is the Strangest Month. Comments of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions are of course welcomed.


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